Ruhr Area

Yesterday, the last active coal mine Germany stopped all mining activity. The pitmen brought up the last piece of coal ever to be dug in Germany. It is only fitting and appropriate that this happened in the Ruhr Valley, the heart of German coal mining industry. This is a collection of photographs of the shaft towers here in the Ruhr Valley in Germany. With a nod of respect for the pitmen and all that they have done in the last centuries post this image here. “Glück auf!”, as the pitmen say in Germany.

„Let’s go shoot some architecture,“ said my photo buddy Achim. So I suggested we could go to one of the most iconic architectural locations in the Ruhr area (Germany), the ThyssenKrupp headquarters. But I had no idea that we would find the place in a unique condition, enabling us to get some very rare photos from a place that has been photographed over and over again already.

In this series, I explore ways to photograph historic items and places in a way that reflects their age and inspires ideas and stories of their glories past. Today, we are going to explore reflections and (semi-)transparency. They both add a layer to the photograph, an extra step for the viewer to grasp the subject. They make the subject more distant and less immediate. They can obscure it, covering or distorting historical and original and adding new detail like haze or dirt.

On the eastern edge of the Ruhr Valley, the River Rhine meanders northwards to the North Sea, separating the industrial Ruhr Valley from the rural charm of the Lower Rhine Region. This constitutes a unique and fascinating contrast between peace and rural beauty amid motorway bridges, steel mills, and power stations. In this post, I’d like to share some of the photographs I have taken there.

Photographing exhibits in a museum is boring? Not necessarily. This is the first of a series of blog posts all about photographing historic items, buildings, and places. I will explore and discuss simple techniques which reintroduce the patina of age and history which so often is lost in sterile and well-lit exhibitions.

Alsum is the name of a small village on the eastern shores of the Rhine. Today, the area is used by the ThyssenKrupp Schwelgern Steel Mill, one of the largest steel mills in Germany. It is the combination of three elements, the river Rhine, the steel mill, and the Alsum Hill, which make this place a fascinating photo location, the latter providing a nicely elevated viewpoint on the other two.